Going to the Moon? Don’t Touch the Historical Artifacts, NASA Says

Don’t say you haven’t been warned. NASA put out an official document today specifying how close any future spacecraft and astronauts visiting the Moon can come to the artifacts left on the lunar surface by all US space missions, including the Apollo landing sites, any robotic landing sites like Surveyor and impact sites like LCROSS.

While these recommendations are not mandatory (there’s obviously no way to enforce this yet) the document states, “rather, it is offered to inform lunar spacecraft mission planners interested in helping preserve and protect lunar historic artifacts and potential science opportunities for future missions.”
For example, NASA recommends an artifact boundary extending 75 m from the Apollo 11 lunar module descent stage.

NASA isn’t expecting a rush of astro-looters to descend upon the Moon, but with China discussing a Moon landing, and with several Google Lunar X PRIZE teams hoping to send robotic landers, they want to make sure nothing from previous missions is disturbed.

“In the 50 years since the first lunar missions, the spaceflight community has not formally provided recommendations to the next generation of lunar explorers on how to preserve the original artifacts and protect ongoing science from the potentially damaging effects of nearby landers,” NASA said in an accompanying press release, saying that they recognize the steadily increasing technical capabilities of space-faring commercial entities and nations throughout the world that may be on the verge of landing spacecraft on the surface of the Moon.

The document specifies how close another spacecraft can hover, flyover, hop or touchdown near landing sites or spacecraft.

And not just hardware is included in the “don’t touch” areas: “U.S. human, human-robotic lunar presence, including footprints, rover tracks, etc., although not all anthropogenic indicators are protected as identified in the recommendations,” the document says.

NASA’s decisions on proximity boundaries were made from recommendations from external experts from the historic, scientific and flight-planning communities and apply to US government artifacts on the lunar surface.

NASA says they released this document to open discussions with commercial and international space agencies, and seek any improvements to the recommendations.

All human artifacts left on the moon should be included in this directive! You are so correct! Also the artifacts from the up-coming second wave of lunar exploration will need to be preserved as well, from whatever country that sends them: (Russia, China, India, The USA.)

Of course NASA is right about protecting the historical artifacts on the Moon!

Haven’t we all gone to museums where everything has the ‘Please Do Not Touch (or take any photos)’ on the side? The same precautions should be taken with places of high historical importance like the Apollo landing sites.

Actually there are some artifacts that are still being used: i.e. the laser reflector etc. But from a purely historical standpoint these sites are invaluable to us now and to future generations, and should be protected for that reason. Today here on Earth, one of the most sought after sites for archaeologists are the waste dumps of long gone Peoples. These places tell us volumes about what these people ate, how they worked, the level of their technological sophistication, etc. etc. Far from being “Morons” this effort to preserve these sites by NASA is a forward looking directive and in our best interests as a Nation, even as a species.